Yearly Archives: 2009

Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw is off to Latitude this weekend: champions “greener festivals”

In a piece for this week’s Music Week Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw announces he is off to Latitude this weekend to check out Thom Yorke. Bradshaw also says he is a Big Chill regular.

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How About Garden Eco-Art For Your Corporate Campus?

Looking to green your company/organizations’s grounds? How about something intriguing, restorative and educational? Impossible?? No, just look to Sonoma’s Corner Stone Gardens for inspiration. I was on my way to taste wines in the Russian River, but became enchanted by the Corner Stone Gardens, which feature  micro-climates of inspirational and educational faire.  If you can’t get there, check out “corner stone – new frontiers in modern gardens.” www.cornerstonegardens.com

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Dancers for Dolphins

New Zealand's Soul Speed Activist Theatre and Dance Troupe

Dancing for Dolphins

We can’t see dolphins swimming under the water, getting caught in nets, BUT we can see dancers imitating dolphins getting caught.

Maui’s Dolphins are endangered dolphins found in New Zealand’s waters: There are only about 110 Maui’s Dolphins left. The most significant dangers are entanglement in fishing nets and by-catch.

Read here to see how this group of activists found a powerful way to bring attention to an additional danger disrupting the dolphin’s life: invasive research methods.

Most of the activists are parents, and they want their children to grow up with the dolphins in their shared future of humans, nonhumans and the land.  To protest the research actions, they created a dance.

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Sequelism Pt 3: the installation underway

Sequelism Pt 3: Possible, Probable or Preferable Futures opens this weekend at the Arnolfini in Bristol featuring work by  Heman Chong, Haegue Mariana Castillo Deball, Graham Gussin, Victor Man, Francesc Ruiz, Jordan Wolfson and Haegue Yang, with events by Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska, Roy Ascott and Will Holder

Via Latitudes blog, here are images of the installation in progress:


Information on the exhibition, opening July 18.


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Quick Friday notes…

Transition Town innovator Rob Hopkins noted that Ed Miliband used the notion of “transition towns” a lynchpin concept in the launch of his White Paper on Energy and Climate Change Policy. Determined to discover whether his movement was being used as window dressing or not, he publishes his own review of the paper giving the proposals 6/10.

John Vidal at the Guardian has given it credit for seizing control of the levers of control of the energy industry, saying that this sort of thing has never been attempted on this scale before:

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Meanwhile, LA continues to surprise by confounding its image as a megalopolis on on the road to hell. This Arts:Earth Partnership initiative, greening the city’s performace spaces, is interesting.

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APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates

Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab EmiratesA new initiative in the United Arab Emirates aims to embed land/ecological art installations across the region, continuously distributing clean energy into the electrical grid. The intent of the Land Art Generator Initiative LAGI is that each land art sculpture will have the potential to provide power to up to 50,000 homes in the UAE. Directed by artist Elizabeth Monoian and architect Robert Ferry and sponsored by the Society for Cultural Exchange, a nonprofit in Pittsburgh, Pa., LAGI is in a research phase, seeking further sponsorship. At the conclusion of 2010, the initiative plans to have pragmatic and comprehensive site/art proposals that will arise from an open competition to which artists, scientists, engineers and architects will be encouraged to submit ideas. See the blog section of the site bLAGI for related arts examples. There is a video about the project on the Web site of the Tavis Smiley Show: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/voices/656.html. Thanks, Land Arts listserv.

via APInews: Land Art Initiative Emerges in United Arab Emirates .

A Public, Private, Planetary Partnership Grows in LA

Joel Shapiro_Justin Yoffe_72dpi

Joel Shapiro and Justin Yoffe, co-founders of Arts:Earth Partnership

About seventy people gathered on Friday, June 26th at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Bergamot Station to celebrate the launch of a new organization that uses only one color in its visionary design: green. The kind of green that speaks to fresh foods, verdant forests, sustainable living and a healthy planet.

In the main gallery, several speakers addressed the audience, including Ken Genser Mayor of Santa Monica, Ernest Dillahay, Director of Cultural Facilities for the City of Los Angeles, Justin Yoffe, Cultural Affairs Director for the City of Santa Monica, and Joel Shapiro, Artistic Director of the Electric Lodge in Venice.

They shared their vision to reduce, recycle, reuse and rethink energy in measurable ways that are specific to the cultural community. The mood was leisurely, but the message from behind the podium was passionate: for the creative community to take a leadership role in halting the effects of global warming, we must think and act differently now.

The mechanism to do this is The Arts:Earth Partnership. Not some utopian fantasy, The Arts:Earth Partnership, or AEP, is a collective of cultural leaders, facilities, theaters, museums, dance studios, art galleries, performing arts companies and individual artists committed to achieving environmental sustainability.

AEP co-founder Joel Shapiro told the audience that 25,000 people come to the Electric Lodge each year. The energy of this performing and visual arts space is supplied by solar panels. To rent the space, independent producers are required to have a recycling plan for their sets, and all front of house and off stage lights are energy efficient.

Shapiro said that he and Justin Yoffe, who is the board president of the Lodge, got the idea for AEP when they started to wonder: what if more facilities shared the same philosophy as the Lodge? How many theaters or galleries or performing arts centers would share resources, reduce their own costs and contribute to the health of the planet? How many people would learn about the cost savings and start to make changes at home?

They started doing research seven years ago and found that bloated applications, expensive start up costs and programs that did not meet the needs of cultural organizations made ‘going green’ a black hole of despair. They decided to develop a new model, one that would make sense to most non-profit organizations whose daily work is often characterized by stretched dollars, resources and staff.

Shapiro and Yoffe started knocking on doors. The cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica answered and joined with them as AEP founding partners. The City of Los Angeles pledged to convert all of their cultural facilities (30-35) into certified sustainable operations. Santa Monica also connected AEP to their own resource for going green, Sustainable Works, the non-profit organization that, in four years, has helped convert 35 businesses into green companies.

The staff at Sustainable Works trained AEP auditors to conduct energy use assessments at cultural facilities that want to reduce their environmental impact. AEP offers a two-year certification program that includes the assessment, tools, resources and staff support for changing to green technology and practices. Organizations pay a fee for the service and then become members of the collective. Fees are based on the size of the organization’s operating budget. To attract more organizations of all sizes, both Los Angeles and Santa Monica pledged to pay the first year of the two-year AEP certification fees for the artists and organizations that signed up at the reception to join the collective.

Jan Williamson_Joel Shapiro

Jan Williamson, Executive Director of the 18th Street Arts Center and AEP advisory board member talks with Joel Shapiro.

Shapiro said that certification requires each member to use at least 25% renewable energy. The Lodge itself is the gold standard, using 100% renewable energy. In the first year, with 30 current members using at least 25% renewable energy, AEP will reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 50 tons. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual output of 7 households of 4 adults each. It may not sound like much, but the more organizations and artists join, the more CO2 emissions will drop, the more the creative community can help tip planetary scales back towards balance and inspire others to do the same. Indeed, it’s working already as 25 artists and 25 cultural organizations signed up on Friday.

AEP will track the progress of certified members, as they change from wasteful to efficient energy use and then publish its findings in an annual report. AEP plans to hold annual ‘convergences’ so that cultural leaders can learn from each other by sharing stories, news and information. On their website, AEP also offers a materials exchange board, a resource especially suited to theatres and galleries that rotate sets and exhibitions and frequently use production materials.

After the speeches, small groups hovered near the podium, eager to continue the conversation. The rest of the crowd took in the exhibition of Barkley Hendrick’s bold life-sized portraits, or wandered out into the warm evening air and over to the literature table and makeshift bar. Next to the bar was a sporty car that had been turned into a planter, with succulents and cacti bursting from its windows, trunk and hood. If you can envision a world where abandoned cars are ideal places for gardens, then AEP is an organization that needs your energy (renewable, of course) and commitment to paint the world green.

Nature as violence: Gustav Metzger

I like this flickr photo Fustav Metzger’s Flailing Trees at the Manchester International Festival by Pete Birkinshaw aka BinaryApe, especially for the title BinaryApe gave it:   Iä!  Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

That reference, along with his link to Wikipedia, confirms him to be …

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Congress Uses Poetry to Talk about Climate Change

One of my favorite poets, Drew Dellinger, has reached Congress through the raw beauty and strength of his words.  Click here to see Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin refer to Drew’s poem in aid of Al Gore describing our responsibility to our future grandchildren as it relates to climate change.

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